One particular scene from A, in which a plainclothes policeman attacks an Aum follower who is then arrested for attacking the actual attacker (Mori was filming from a distance), sparked controversy among the audience watching the film.[citation needed] The footage was later introduced in court and the 'Aum attacker' was acquitted as a result. Filmmaker Mori was accused of staging the improbable incidents and using actors.[citation needed] Some even refused to believe the footage was shot inside the Aum facilities.[citation needed]

When A2, Mori's second controversial film about the cult was completed, the filmmaker declared his unwillingness to return to the Aum theme in the future.[citation needed] By his own admission, the efforts invested in production of the two documentaries did not bring him anything more than financial damage and troubles, due to limited scale of theatrical screening and refusal of TV broadcasting corporations to licence the films (Mori refused to allow isolated scenes to be used in video sets to Aum-related news broadcasts).[citation needed] However, in 2010 he wrote a critically acclaimed book on the intervening decade of Aum entitled A3.

While his documentaries on Aum Shinrikyo were very controversial when they were being filmed and shown, Mori is today considered amongst Japan’s most talented independent non-fiction filmmakers.[citation needed] His most recent work, 311 (2011), is a collaborative work about the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake.[4]